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SAG Harbor
The Golden Globe Awards, which air on NBC, get more attention than they deserve. The Screen Actors Guild Awards, which aired Sunday night on TBS and TNT, deserve more attention than they get. Many of the SAG members also vote for the acting categories of the Oscars. The Golden Globe winners are chosen by a relatively small group of entertainment reporters from foreign countries.
Like the Globes, the SAGs honor both TV and movies. For me the awards got off to a bad start by dissing two of my favorite shows, “Dexter” and “Breaking Bad.” I tried watching a few episodes of “Boardwalk Empire,” which won for lead actor and ensemble, but ended up canceling the scheduled recordings on my DVR. The comedy winners were better choices: Alec Baldwin, Betty White and “Modern Family.”
When the Oscar nominations were announced, I was pleased that I had already seen five of the ten Best Picture nominees. There’s a good chance that several awards will go to the films I’ve seen so far: “The King’s Speech,” “The Social Network,” “Black Swan,” “Inception” and “Toy Story 3.”
It would have been awesome if Robert Duvall had won for “Get Low,” a movie I liked a lot. However, I can’t fault the Guild for rewarding Colin Firth’s portrayal of King George VI. “The King’s Speech” is loaded with a great cast. I especially liked how easy it was to tell which historical figures were represented. I knew instantly that Guy Pearce was playing the king who would abdicate the throne. I could even tell which of George VI’s young daughters was supposed to be the future Queen Elizabeth. The same applies to the seeing Timothy “Wormtail” Spall as Winston Churchill.
Natalie Portman’s SAG win makes her an Oscar front runner too. “Black Swan” was an intense study of a mentally ill woman suffering from delusions as she trains to be the Swan Queen in “Swan Lake.” Like the ballerina, the audience doesn’t realize when a hallucination has begun. I wondered if all the characters were real or if we might find out at the end that Mila Kunis or Barbara Hershey were portraying figments of Portman’s imagination. I decided they were real but I could argue the other point too.
Snake Charmers
Watching “Mega Python vs. Gatoroid” on Saturday night brought to mind a pressing question. Which looks less natural, the atrocious CGI or Tiffany’s hair color? The movie is laughably bad. Or you could say laughably good. They seemed to spend their whole budget on hiring actors who get killed by the title creatures instead of using the money for more convincing computer animation. Stuntmen in giant rubber snake and gator suits might have looked more realistic.
Tiffany and Debbie Gibson are listed in the opening credits as co-producers. So when they talk about “our movie,” they mean it literally. In one of their comments after a commercial break, the two women promised that their characters would continue making bad decisions that result in a high death toll of day-players. I chuckled when one redneck hunter honored the death of his buddy by cracking open a beer.
With gigantic steroid-fed reptiles on the prowl, there’s no reason to sweat over smaller details. For example, the mountainous topography of Bronson Canyon (home of TV’s Batcave) is supposed to be only a short drive from the sea-level Everglades.
The best actress in the film is Kathryn Joosten, who you would probably know from “The West Wing” and “Desperate Housewives.” Former Monkee Micky Dolenz shows up as himself. He’s the entertainment for the big party and does not disappoint. The fancy party is where the highly-touted catfight between Tiffany and Debbie occurs. It starts an hour and nineteen minutes into the movie, in case you’re fast-forwarding. The pop idol brawl soon becomes a food fight, complete with buttercreamed cleavage.
Pennsyl-Maine-ia
People in Pennsylvania are unhappy about plans to make Whoopie Pies the official dessert of Maine. They claim the sweet treat originated with the Amish in the Keystone State, not the lobstermen in Vacationland.
Whoopie Pies are like an inside-out cupcake. It might be more accurate to think of them as an icing sandwich. I first heard of them in 2003 when Oprah Winfrey handed them out to her audience: “You get a pie! And you get a pie!”
I went Whoopie shopping in Maine in 2009. Here’s what I wrote about it:
We saw a wide variety of Whoopie Pies at Wicked Whoopies in Freeport. I remember when they were featured on Oprah several years ago. I contacted them and asked for a sample. They sent a whole bunch of traditional Whoopies to the radio station where I worked at the time. On Tuesday we bought an assortment of flavors to share with family members in New York and Virginia this week. I had a banana Whoopie on Thursday and loved it. The gingerbread and oatmeal cookie Whoopies look pretty good too.
What? Why?
The Boston Beaneaters sound like the punchline for a flatulence joke. Thanks to my vanity Google Alert, I learned yesterday that the Boston Beaneaters were a Major League Baseball team from 1883 to 1906. They had a player named Frank Murphy during part of the 1901 season. After a month and a half, his contract was sold to the New York Giants.
1883: To avoid confusion with Cincinnati Red Stockings of the American Association, Boston’s National League franchise changes its name to Beaneaters. The Beaneaters would go on to finish with an impressive 63-35 record, while collecting their third National League Championship.
The Beaneaters changed their name several more times to become the Boston Doves, the Boston Pilgrims, the Boston Braves, the Boston Bees, the Boston Braves again, the Milwaukee Braves and finally the Atlanta Braves.
Some of Murphy’s teammates have names that immediately identify the era as early 20th century. Imagine hearing a stadium announcer introduce Duff Cooley, Daff Gammons, Kid Nichols, Togie Pittinger, Heinie Smith, Dummy Taylor, Dummy Leitner, Dummy Deegan and Chauncey Fisher.
Sadly, Murphy died at age 36. He is buried in Sleepy Hollow Cemetery, which is also the final resting place of some notable figures of industry and literature including Washington Irving himself.
Qu’est-ce Que C’est
Talking Heads didn’t yet have a greatest hits album back in the days when I got promo copies of their catalog. I remember thinking that I liked only one song on each CD. In each case, my favorite was the obvious choice. The exception is the “True Stories” soundtrack. On that disc I love “Puzzlin’ Evidence” a thousand times more than the hit, “Wild Wild Life.”
“Life During Wartime”, “Road to Nowhere” and “Psycho Killer” are three of the best. While I was looking around on the Internet, I saw a live version of “Psycho Killer” that I rather enjoyed:
I wouldn’t even be thinking about Talking Heads today if it weren’t for an article in the new issue of Metro Pulse. The newspaper profiles four local cover bands, including one that plays only Talking Heads songs. Same As It Ever Was has a gig at Barley’s Taproom on Saturday April 30 at 10:30 p.m. I don’t know if I can make it that night but I’ll go ahead and put it on my Google calendar just in case.
Wine and Knees
“Dinner with the Bone Doctor” sold out ten days prior to Monday night’s event. It was the second time that forensic fans filled Echo Bistro & Wine Bar in Bearden to hear Dr. Bill Bass speak while they ate. The first such event was last July. A third dinner at Echo is scheduled for August 8, 2011. Hors d’oeuvres, soup and salad preceded the main course of sea bass, veal ragù and a fried scallop with beets and asparagus. Dessert consisted of chocolate mousse, raspberry sorbet, whipped cream and a finger cookie with an almond sliver fingernail.
Proceeds from the dinner benefited the Dr. William M. Bass III Forensic Anthropology Center at the University of Tennessee. The target date for the building’s completion is early July. The Bone Zones team does a great job in organizing events for Dr. Bass. They sell books and collect additional donations for the building fund. As in the past, they used artificial hips and knees as paperweights and business-card holders. Jennifer Alexander and I served as emcees for the evening.
Dr. Bass talked about determining the age and sex of a victim based on their skeletal remains. He compared jawbones of two children to an adult to illustrate the difference in their teeth. He also compared a baby femur to an adult femur. The most interesting bone belonged to an 18th century Native American from Montana. Dr. Bass theorized that the man’s leg was broken when he was kicked by a horse. He survived the injury but his femur healed badly. As the evening ended, Chef Seth Simmerman and his wife Lisa announced that they were donating their cremains to the Body Farm.
Poe Folks
“Steaks on the table at 7:30!” I can still hear Bobby Poe Sr. make that announcement at his annual convention. I was saddened to learn that Bobby died on Saturday at age 77. Bobby Jr. has posted his dad’s life story, written in the Poe Kat’s own words.
The Pop Music Survey Convention brought the music industry to the Washington suburbs. I made it to a few of the gatherings in the late ’80s and early ’90s at the Sheraton Reston and the Sheraton Premiere at Tysons Corner. The convention ended its 25-year run in 1996.
The Bobby Poe conventions gave me the opportunity to rub elbows with radio heavyweights like Scott Shannon and Steve Kingston, who would travel from New York for the event. Shannon complimented me in front of my bosses from WAVA by saying he wanted to hire me. It helped me get a nice raise that year.
The music business was always well-represented. One year I walked into a suite sponsored by a record company as Marc Cohn started playing “Walking in Memphis.” One of the more memorable personalities I would see at the Poe conventions was A&M executive Charlie Minor, who was murdered in 1995.
Bobby Jr. announced the news of his father’s passing on Facebook. There are some great pictures from the old days on Bobby Sr.’s Facebook page.
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